HKUPOP: Monthly Public Sentiment Index dropsBack

“Voices from the Hall” jointly organized by The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong and Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) will be held on Sunday, May 5. About 100 Hong Kong citizens randomly selected by POP will be invited to attend a deliberation session on the topic of “Chief Executive Election in 2017”. Guest speakers will include Fanny Law, Tam Yiu-chung, Albert Ho and Benny Tai. Changes in opinion among the participants before and after the debate will also be analyzed. For this activity, POP has launched a “POP App” for smartphone users, and constructed a feature page for “Voices from the Hall” at PopCon (http://popcon.hk). Opinions from netizens will be collected through online surveys and forums. People can now download the App from Google Play or iOS App Store, or submit their opinion to PopCon directly.

The Public Sentiment Index (PSI) compiled by POP aims at quantifying Hong Kong people’s sentiments, in order to explain and predict the likelihood of collective behaviour. PSI comprises 2 components: one being Government Appraisal (GA) Score and the other being Society Appraisal (SA) Score. GA refers to peoples’ appraisal of society’s governance while SA refers to peoples’ appraisal of the social environment. Both GA and SA scores are compiled from a variety of opinion survey figures. All PSI, GA and SA scores range between 0 to 200, with 100 meaning normal, the grading reference of the scores are shown below. For methodological detailed please refer to the HKU POP Site at http://hkupop.pori.hk.

POP started to pilot study the “Public Sentiment Index” in year 2010 in collaboration with NowTV. The first survey was conducted in June 2010, followed by a series of monthly tracking surveys in 2011. There were altogether 13 surveys, covered by 11 releases from March 2011 to January 2012. All results have been uploaded to the POP Site.

At the end of June 2012, before the 15th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong, POP officially released a “PSI analysis” with figures dating back to 1992, spanning over 20 years. Moreover, the frequency of the study was set at twice a month. In October 2012, echoing the start of a new Legislative Council, POP decided to set the cut-off date of all PSI analyses at the Sunday proceeding every 15th and last day of month, whereas the release date was set at the first Thursday following the cut-off date, except under special circumstances.

Cut-off date of the PSI figures released by POP today is April 28, 2013, while that of the next round of release will be May 12, 2013. The tentative release date for the next release will be May 16, 2013 (Thursday).

The PSI released by POP today shows that as of April 28, 2013, the latest Public Sentiment Index (PSI) is 78.8, up 1.3 from early-April. As for the Government Appraisal (GA), the score is 91.5, up 2.0 from early-April, while that of the Society Appraisal (SA) remains unchanged at 78.5 because no new survey has been conducted. The monthly average charts of PSI, GA and SA are shown below:

As for the meaning of the score values, please refer to the following:

Recent PSI, GA and SA figures are tabulated as follows:

Recent average PSI, GA and SA figures per month are tabulated as follows:

Edward Chit-Fai Tai, Senior Data Analyst of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “Hong Kong’s Public Sentiment Index has slightly recovered in late-April. However, because of its relatively low reading in mid-April, the monthly PSI of April is lower than that of March, registering a score below 80 for the third time since CE CY Leung has taken office, meaning that peoples’ appraisal of overall governance and social environment has turned negative. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of these figures, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using detailed records displayed in the ‘Opinion Daily’ of our POP Site.”

• May 16, 2013 (Thursday) 1pm to 2pm

Please refer to the HKU POP Site at http://hkupop.pori.hk.

• Online resource: “PSI” methodological notes (Chinese Only)

• Online chart: PSI (per month) (1992-2013)

• Online table: PSI (per month) (1992-2013)

• Online table: PSI (per release) (7/2012 – 4/2013)